Derek Gilmer
11-17-2011, 10:13 PM
A artistic lines and style are not my strongest side. I'm more of a bullet points and programmatic kind of guy. So I'm reaching out to you artistic types for some advise and criticism on my design(s) for a chess set I'd like to make. My goal is to build the board and turn the pieces from start to finish. I've got walnut, cherry, and maple from a local saw mill that I helped him saw up and will do the drying and finish milling in my shop. The same goes for the chess pieces. I'm using walnut for the black pieces and am in flux between cherry and maple for the white pieces. I'm leaning toward maple with the thought of using some birdseye maple for the king and queen to make them stand out. If I do birdseye for while there will need to be something pronounced for the black king and queen to balance the extra flair the birdeye brings. I am also planning on going with only a clear finish for the pieces.
I started by sketching the queen and a few other pieces to get a rough idea of what they should look like. Then played around on the lathe tonight to make a queen out of a chunk of cherry I had laying around. As you can tell I missed my sketch by quite a bit. Which is OK, after further review I"m going to tweak her lines a bit more. My goals for the pieces are to be more representative of their names than many of the chess sets I've seen. The queen should have graceful feminine curves while being the second largest piece on her side.
Here was my first sketch of one half of a queen:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3SY9fq3ZxYI/TsXH1_Tm5WI/AAAAAAAAHiE/AlS9TU5aRXM/s640/IMG_1816.JPG
And what came off the lathe:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-NKIBRTia-hE/TsXFf32zzQI/AAAAAAAAHh4/dwmEqhfwZAc/s400/small.jpg
First off I ran out of space to add the crown and her poor neck snapped off so pardon the super glue necklace she has on :cool:. On top of that the balance is way off. The head is out of proportion with the body. And the skirt section is much to wide for the graceful look I wanted.
I imported my sketch into a vector program, doubled it and over-layed it on my turning. The sketch landed somewhere between the turned piece and my finished goal below. I adjusted the lines from my original sketch to fit the look I'm going for and ended up here:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-b6k8Pmgi0Zw/TsXFgYgqy6I/AAAAAAAAHiA/TqpisMzmrkA/s400/reality.jpg = https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-YIv0FqpznmA/TsXFgHvr8dI/AAAAAAAAHh8/SzUadwMWXMk/s400/goal.jpg
The shoulders still seem a bit wide and tall to me. Plus the head needs a little curve to it instead of a straight line.
So my questions are (see more bullet points :) ):
Any ideas on a "fancy" dark wood to go with the birds eye maple king and queen. I'd prefer to go with a North American species and use only a clear finish.
Stylistic feedback on the queen's design.
As I finish more sketches and sample pieces I'll append them here. Hopefully it will be a nice running commentary on the process.
I started by sketching the queen and a few other pieces to get a rough idea of what they should look like. Then played around on the lathe tonight to make a queen out of a chunk of cherry I had laying around. As you can tell I missed my sketch by quite a bit. Which is OK, after further review I"m going to tweak her lines a bit more. My goals for the pieces are to be more representative of their names than many of the chess sets I've seen. The queen should have graceful feminine curves while being the second largest piece on her side.
Here was my first sketch of one half of a queen:
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3SY9fq3ZxYI/TsXH1_Tm5WI/AAAAAAAAHiE/AlS9TU5aRXM/s640/IMG_1816.JPG
And what came off the lathe:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-NKIBRTia-hE/TsXFf32zzQI/AAAAAAAAHh4/dwmEqhfwZAc/s400/small.jpg
First off I ran out of space to add the crown and her poor neck snapped off so pardon the super glue necklace she has on :cool:. On top of that the balance is way off. The head is out of proportion with the body. And the skirt section is much to wide for the graceful look I wanted.
I imported my sketch into a vector program, doubled it and over-layed it on my turning. The sketch landed somewhere between the turned piece and my finished goal below. I adjusted the lines from my original sketch to fit the look I'm going for and ended up here:
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-b6k8Pmgi0Zw/TsXFgYgqy6I/AAAAAAAAHiA/TqpisMzmrkA/s400/reality.jpg = https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-YIv0FqpznmA/TsXFgHvr8dI/AAAAAAAAHh8/SzUadwMWXMk/s400/goal.jpg
The shoulders still seem a bit wide and tall to me. Plus the head needs a little curve to it instead of a straight line.
So my questions are (see more bullet points :) ):
Any ideas on a "fancy" dark wood to go with the birds eye maple king and queen. I'd prefer to go with a North American species and use only a clear finish.
Stylistic feedback on the queen's design.
As I finish more sketches and sample pieces I'll append them here. Hopefully it will be a nice running commentary on the process.